December 6, 2011

Samsung promises retail flexible AMOLED displays next year, other screens line up for yoga classes

The commercial production of Samsung's flexible AMOLED displays will commence Q2 of 2012, in Samsung Mobile Display's new 5.5Gen factory that recently opened shop, said the company.

This
will open the door to all kinds of gizmos, like phones and tablets,
being graced with the bendable goodness. While it is unlikely that a
truly bendable or foldable phone or tablet will emerge out of this,
since we have other physical components that don't do yoga, the new
displays will at the very least make our current gadgets more resistant
to damage. At least Samsung is fine smashing them with a hammer.

The flexible AMOLEDs are layered on top of special plastic substrates,
instead of the classic glass ones, and Samsung will expand mass
production of the plastic substrates next year to meet its production
goals. That surely opens the door to numerous possibilities, as diverse
as lighting fixtures and high-resolution wrist watches, for example.

Samsung is definitely planning to use those in phones and tablets of its own making, too, but if it is also considering wearable phones
with the curvy image-producing sheets, like the above-mentioned wrist
watches, that would certainly be something to wait for. Still, come on,
where is our tablet, whose screen folds or snaps back into a phone
format at will? So many movies and design concepts (see the second
video) have shown these already, how hard can it be?